Celebrate Week #17 with more

I flew six thousand miles from Pacific to Atlantic to Pacific to spend three wonderful days teaching in kindergarten through third grade classrooms in two Brooklyn schools.

Travel …

Here are a couple views from my window in the sky: NYC skyline as we approach LaGuardia Airport (LGA) on Monday evening, Mt Hood and ships in the Columbia River as we approach Portland Airport (PDX) on Friday.

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In the classroom …

During the three days, my modeling focused on crafting sentences using imitation, anchor lessons, and a purposeful routine I call Tactical Sentence Instruction.

We analyzed sentences from E.B.White’s Charlotte’s Web. It was such fun to use mime to create our scenarios from which to generate ideas and words for our imitation sentences. Here’s a snapshot from our first mime during second grade.

We closely examined the structure of sentences with two anchor lessons. In first grade we had deep discussion about the four kinds of sentences and their structural changes, pushing beyond end punctuation marks to expand our understanding.

In second grade, we examined simple and compound sentences, discovering how our choice of coordinating conjunctions can change the meaning of the sentence.

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My first #A9Giveaway …

This week I posted my first #A9giveaway — a chance to win FREE enrollment in one my workshops in El Paso. You can view them on my Calendar.

Thanks, Cheryl! Try the word webbing brainstorm with your daughter. She can draw pictures and write single word associations, e.g., rhyming words, other words made from the word, synonyms and antonyms, and put it in a sentence at the bottom… even if it is copied from a text. She’ll love doing it with you!

I live the photos from the approach into PDX… miss the days when I saw that view. I live the sentence work and am amazed by the first and second graders! I’ve used similar lessons from Jeff Anderson with 5th and 6th graders.

Thanks for stopping by, Diane! Though I’ve made it hundreds of times, I never tire of the approach into PDX. 🙂 Did you live in Portland? I’ve been doing sentences like this with primary kids for years based on ideas inspired from 19th century grammar books that I’ve collected. And I first shared them in my early grammar workshops about 20 years ago. And now, CCSS has placed this sentence knowledge in grades 1-3.

Sounds like a great trip, Alice! In waiting for God to bring me my mr right, several friends remind me it’s about “quality not quantity.” In other words, sometimes less is more. I’m in the 50 spot this week.

Well, Tara, you never know how/when God will arrange that… I’m reminded of Rebekah and her meeting with Eliezer by the well … who knew that day when she went to the well to draw water that she would meet the servant of her future husband.